POLITICS-INDIA: Religion Takes Back Seat in Key Provincial Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 2 2003 (IPS) - The big surprise in this week’s elections in four north Indian states in the Hindi-speaking heartland is the fact that religion has played an insignificant role, compared to issues such as power supply, drought relief and the sheer performance of incumbent governments.

While the results of the elections on Monday are expected only late Thursday, exit polls indicate that the pro-Hindu ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is poised to capture the large and populous states of central Madhya Pradesh and western Rajasthan from the opposition Congress party governments that rule them.

The Congress is favoured to retain Delhi, a state of 14 million people and the seat of the central government, as well as central Chattisgarh state but, as with the larger states, for reasons other than religion.

Analysing the exit polls, the chief editor of the ‘Indian Express’ newspaper, Shekhar Gupta said that for the first time, the BJP was showing evidence that it had transformed itself into being a mainstream party that can take on the monolithic Congress party that has dominated Indian politics since independence in 1947.

”Many of the old stereotypes such as that the BJP is a cadre-based party supported by traders and upper (Hindu) castes do not apply any more,” Gupta said.

He added that poorer and socially backward sections of the population were now beginning to identify with the BJP in the same way they used to do to the professedly left-of-centre Congress party.

The BJP sneaked into Indian politics by first creating a pro-Hindu wave in the early 90s and then riding its crest to national power in 1998. Along the way, it forged alliances with regional parties that were opposed to the Congress party but did not necessarily care for religion-based politics.

In fact, important constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance have warned that they would not support the BJP’s main agenda of building a temple at the site where its cadres demolished the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, fanning widespread communal strife between Hindus and minority Muslims.

Last year, the BJP’s communal politics reached a zenith when the party’s government in western Gujarat state engineered a pogrom in which more than 2,000 Muslims perished and tens of thousands of others rendered homeless.

But the BJP, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, swept back to power in provincial elections held in November. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has expressed revulsion at the violence, finding it difficult to balance the secular views of coalition partners against that of hardliners in his own BJP party who at one point prevented him from sacking Modi. Vajpayee, widely regarded as a moderate within his own party, has also expressed regret at the demolition of the Babri Masjid, an incident that was a departure from the constitutional ideal of secular state in which all faiths had equal status.

In the current provincial elections, considered to be the semifinals to general elections scheduled for September next year, the BJP has chosen to play down its pro-Hindu image.

This has caught the Congress party by surprise and pinned it down on issues of development and governance.

For example, in Madhya Pradesh, a sprawling state in the heart of India with a population of 60 million people, it was the Congress party’s incumbent chief minister Digvijay Singh that was supporting pro-Hindu issues such as a ban on cow slaughter.

On the other hand, the candidate for chief minister, Uma Bharti, who wears the saffron clothes of a Hindu ascetic sworn to celibacy, chose to stress acute power shortages in Madhya Pradesh.

Digivjay Singh seemed also to suffer from his long incumbency, having served two consecutive five-year terms as chief minister in one of India’s poorest and most backward states.

The other state where the BJP could do well, without being propped up by religion, is the desert state of Rajasthan, where Congress party chief minister Ashok Gehlot has been having a rough time countering the ill-effects of successive years of droughts and scanty rainfall.

But what could undermine Gehlot’s efforts is caste politics. A major chunk of the voters from the largely peasant Jat community, which forms 25 percent of Rajasthan’s 56 million people, have been weaned away by promises of reservation in government jobs after being designated a backward caste and deserving of positive discrimination policies.

Gehlot and the Congress party are hoping for a swing in their favour from other genuinely backward castes and strangely enough, from the high Brahmin (priestly) and Kshatriya (warrior) castes.

Gehlot has promised reservations for poorer individuals from the higher castes, but it remains to be seen whether all that social engineering will help him retain his chief ministership or lose it to the BJP’s Vasundara Raje Scindia.

The net result is a piece of irony in which the elitist BJP has been championing the interests of the Jats, a peasant group, and the Congress party – despite its socialist claims, is backing reservation for upper castes.

India’s two main political formations are thus beginning to look more and more like each other in a process that analysts like Shekhar Gupta say is leading to a genuine two-party system.

If the BJP captures Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states over non-religious issues, it could provide a major fillip for a party struggling to hold its own against the Congress party, which has the advantage of having been around for almost 120 years.

Many believe that the BJP could even be emboldened to call for a snap poll six months ahead of schedule around March 2004 and seize the initiative from the Congress party, which is itching to hold the reins after being out of power since losing a general election in 1996.

At the moment, many things are going in favour of the BJP, such as a steadily climbing rupee, more than 100 billion dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves, an exceptionally good monsoon and unprecedented stock market rally. All of these add up to what the economists are fond of calling a ”feel good factor.”

But the BJP has been bogged down by corruption scandals and electoral reverses in its flagship state of Uttar Pradesh – home of the Babri Masjid and where it launched its pro-Hindu campaign more than a decade ago.